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The Inferno

In Dante’s Inferno, Dante narrates his descent and observation of hell through the various circles and pouches. One part of this depiction is his descriptions of the various punishments that each of the different sinners has received. The various punishments that Dante envisions the sinners receiving are broken down into two types. The first type he borrows from various gruesome and cruel forms of torture and the second type, though often less physically agonizing, is Dante’s creative and imaginative punishment for sins. The borrowed torturous forms of punishments create a physical pain for the shades, whereas the creative punishments are used to inflict a mental and psychological suffering. However, it is possible for the creative punishments to inflict both a mental and physical pain upon the sinner. Several punishments that Dante envisions for the various sinners are borrowed from forms of torture. The first physical punishment Dante borrows from that is his punishment for the heretics. The penalty in the medieval era for heresy was often public humiliation or to burn to death. For Dante, to be a heretic was to follow one’s own opinion and not the beliefs of the Christian Church. Dante’s punishment for the “arch heretics and those who followed them” was that they be “ensepulchered” and to have some tombs “heated more, some less.” Since the archheretics believed that everything died with the body and that there was no soul, Dante not only punishes them with the hot and crowded tombs, but he punishes them with their beliefs and lets them feel what it is like to die. This punishment by Dante is one in which he was more focused on inflicting a physical pain rather than a mental one. Although he uses various torturous practices in The Inferno in order to inflict physical agony, Dante does, sometimes, use famous acts of cruelty to punish the sinners. One such punishment is that which Dante...

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Dante’s journey takes him through the seventh circle of Hell which possesses rings of violent sinners. The first ring contains the sinners who are violent towards themselves. Dante encounters a sinner who said, “We too shall come like the rest, each one to get/ His cast-off body – but not for us to dwell/ Within again, for justice must forbid/ Having what one has robbed oneself of” (105. Line 96-99). This demonstrates the individuals in this ring have committed the sin of violence against themselves. By taking their own life they revealed that they have no appreciation for the gift of their own life that God had provided them with. The punishment for these sinners is to be turned into trees and to be immobile, thus denying them the right to take the form of a human. Since these sinners self destructed, they are only allowed to speak when they are being...

...Imperfect Punishments
Imagine a place where tyrants stand up to their ears in boiling blood, the gluttonous experience monsoons of human filth, and those who commit sins of the flesh are blown about like pieces of paper in a never-ending wind storm. Welcome to Dante's Inferno, his perspective on the appropriate punishments for those who are destined to hell for all eternity. Dante attempts to make the punishments fit the crimes, but because it is Dante dealing out the tortures and not God, the punishments will never be perfect because by nature, man is an imperfect creature. Only God is capable of being above reproach and of metering out a just punishment. While Dante's treatment towards the tyrants is fitting, his views on the inhabitants of the Ante Inferno and Limbo seem to be backwards and these poor people are doomed to suffer misguided punishments. Therefore, despite Dante's best attempts to justly punish each sinner, he makes a few mistakes because he is not God and Dante is unable to unbiasedly judge each sinner.
If you were to attempt a journey through Hell, the first unlucky hellions you would encounter are the inhabitants of the Ante Inferno. The residents of this "not quite heaven, not quite hell" domain were placed here because while living, they chose to neither side with God nor with the Devil. By choosing neither good nor evil, these people sinned because they never chose to live by a set of Christian ideals. The...

...Ashley Boyle
Essay 2
Justice, Power, Love, Intellect: These are the driving forces behind the creation of eternal torment for crimes committed on Earth, according to Dante's God in The Inferno. At the beginning of Canto III, Ciardi’s summary of the law in Dante’s Hell is described as “the law of symbolic retribution. As they sinned so are they punished” (pg 17). In other words, let the punishment fit the crime. However, what does this say about Dante’s view of God? Is He a vengeful God, giving out harsh punishments to those who chose to resist Him in life? Or, does He give out eternal justice to individuals who failed on Earth? Somewhere within Dante’s version of Hell one may find the answer, but first it has to be taken into consideration how Hell is set up, how are the sinners are punished, and if it can be interpreted as a fair and just punishment. Then Dante’s God can be understood.
Dante’s The Inferno is his own interpretation of the circles of hell. Each of the nine circles of Hell represents a worse sin, and therefore, has its own unique and fitting punishment for the crime committed. There are three different main types of offenses; incontinence, violence, and fraud. These offenses are divided, starting with crimes of passion and ending with crimes of fraud. The self-centered crimes are in rings one through five, the violent crimes are held in rings six through eight, and ring nine holds the fraudulent criminals.
For the...

...The Just Punishments in Dante’s InfernoInferno, written by Dante in the early fourteenth century, is a poem about Dante’s, the main characters, journey through Hell and signifies the nature of sin on Earth and punishment in Hell (Gardner et al online). Those who sinned while on Earth are justly condemned to different levels of punishments in Hell, relative to their sins on Earth. Each of the nine circles of Hell represents a worse sin, and therefore, a crueler punishment. The categorized punishments in Hell that Dante Alighieri assigns are symbolically fair and representative of the sins committed on Earth, given the time period and Christian values context from which this poem was written.
The first inhabitants, just outside of Hell, are residents of the Ante Inferno. The Ante Inferno is not quite Heaven and not quite Hell. Those placed here opted to not side with God or the Devil while living, therefore their sin was never choosing to live by a set of Christian ideals. Accordingly, the punishment for those who selected not to follow God is to constantly chase a blank flag. This punishment is appropriate because those who knowingly choose a path other than following God tend to lead a meaningless existence, which is symbolized by the blank flag. Once in the Ante Inferno, they are forced to follow and chase something, a punishment that is both physically and mentally exhausting. While the...

...﻿Part I: Dante’s Inferno
Dante’s Inferno is the most well-known and influential work of the thirteenth century. Dante’s Inferno is not a simple story of his journey through Hell. He depicts Hell with a very vivid picture and description. Dante’s Inferno is one part of the Divine Comedy. The Divine Comedy contains very realistic and frank concepts of the politics, religion and culture of Italy in the late thirteenth and early the fourteenth centuries. This paper develops the most salient political, cultural, and theological elements of Dante’s Inferno, what he wants to tell about his values through his book, and how the book represents western European Mediterranean culture around 1300.
In this time period, Italy was in political chaos. It lacked a stable and secure government. Furthermore, there were competing political factions and turmoil. In these troubled circumstances, Dante’s represents the political thought of the European nations in his book Inferno. The most salient political element of Inferno is the competing political factions in Italy. During his journey in the book Inferno, he criticizes the political factions in Italy many times. As he says, “From there downward he is all of chosen iron, save that his right foot is of baked clay, and he stands erect on that more than on the other.”(Canto XIV) The right foot of baked clay represents the...

...A Literary Review of Dante Alighieri’s “Inferno”
Dante Alighieri’s “Inferno” is a narrative poem describing Dante’s journey through his perception of hell in search of salvation. Dante’s writing of this classic piece was greatly influenced by the politics in Florence during the late thirteenth century but the Inferno is much more than a political symbolic work of literature but is a beautifully poetic and allegorical. Inferno has made a memorable mark in European Literature as a great medieval poem written in vernacular language. Before Dante’s Inferno literary writings were almost all written in Latin, the language of the Catholic Church, but Dante used his native Tuscan dialect which helped unify the Italian language. Dante said his work to be a comedy but he didn’t mean it in a humorous sense but instead as a classical tragedy with a plot having a sad beginning but a happy ending. I think the comedy can relate to everyone in some way as it deals with the questions of humanity and the afterlife.
The Divine comedy consists of a prologue and 33 cantos. Dante and Virgil enter the wide gates of hell and descend through nine circles. In each circle they witness sinners and their punishments for the sins they committed while living on earth. In Dante’s view torture is godly justice. In Canto IX the sinners are the heretics. Canto XI contains the sinners that have committed really bad fraudulent acts....

...realize that Dante wants us to understand that we have all the control over our fate because we have the power to choose right from wrong in any situation. In this poem, it's a matter of making the right decisions and doing the right things to lead a life of God, or its choosing to do the wrong thing, therefore giving your self a hellish existence.
Dante gives us the idea that God is eternally forgiving and accepting of us. Therefore the people we see suffering so horribly all throughout the Inferno have made the decision to be there. None of them ever ask to get out. They are quite literally still choosing to be in hell because they refuse to see the evil in their decisions. You can't feel sorry for any of them because of this. It gives it a certain level of deservidness when you read of all the tortures going on in the Inferno. That I think really explains the idea of contrapasso. You get what you deserve. This is seen in every level of hell, it is what the Inferno is based upon, it is the physical punishment that fits the sin. Like in the seventh circle, for example, tyrants and murderers are immersed in a boiling river of blood. Or in the first ring of the ninth circle, traitors are immersed in ice with their heads bent down. Dante feels that they chose to sin, and now they are paying for it. They choose to be there by not recognizing their responsibility to do the right thing.
I think it is really hard...

...The Inferno written by Dante is a haunting and gruesome tale of one man’s journey through hell. Taking place in 1300 Dante writes about a character named Dante. Throughout the book we are not sure if the character is strictly sketched out like Dante himself or just simply named Dante. Most scholars of Dante believe that he used the name Dante but suggest that no evidence has been given to support the character Dante being based on the poet Dante. The Inferno is about Dante’s travels through hell with the help of his guide, Virgil. Dante gets lost and Virgil helps guide him by taking him through hell and then to heaven where he will see Beatrice, his love. During Dante’s pilgrimage he goes through seven different circles of hell. In each of these circles he encounters sinners who are enduring punishment. The punishment of each sinner exhibits contrapasso. The theme of contrapasso is displayed throughout Dante’s travels in hell. The punishment of the sinner fits the crime. This theory of contrapasso states that the souls suffering in hell should match with what they did on earth and that the sinner is never forgotten by God. The sinner will always be in punishment for whatever crime they committed while on earth. Dante uses contrapasso to help figure out his own morals and those of humans.
Dante and Virgil first begin by going across the river Acheron to the first circle of hell. The first circle of hell is also noted as Limbo. Virgil is a...